1. Open Data Working Group:
Showcases from agricultural domain
Giannis Stoitsis, Agro-Know
Technologies
Open Data Working Group Meeting, National
Documentation Center, 18/10/2013

2. Agro-Know Technologies
• Transform agricultural
and biodiversity data
into services
• Develop meaningful
services using
biodiversity and
agricultural data

3. Our values
 use open data to solve
meaningful societal challenges
 create a data-powered
ecosystem that may bootstrap
agricultural & food innovation
 embrace all data sources,
formats & types relevant to
agricultural research &
innovation
 be technology agnostic
 be vendor independent
 promote open source and open
data

4. Relevant activities
• Participation in the data interoperability groups of
the Research Data Alliance
– wheat
– germplasm
• G8 for Open Data in Agriculture
• EU projects for the generation of a linked agricultural
data infrastructure
– agINFRA
– SemaGrow

5. OPEN DATA IN AGRICULTURE

6. Agriculture is about to experience a “growth shock” in order to cover
the exponentially increasing food needs of the global population
Key facts about agricultural trends
•
All demographic and food demand projections suggest that, by
2050, the planet will face severe food crises due to our inability
to meet agricultural demand – by 2050:
• 9.3 billion global population, 34% higher than today
• 70% of the world’s population will be urban, compared
to 49% today
• food production (net of food used for biofuels) must
increase by 70%
•
According to these projections, and in order to achieve the
forecasted food levels by 2050, a total investment of USD 83
billion per annum will be required
•
A large part of this investment will need to be focused on R&D
6

7. One of the most promising routes to agriculture modernisation
is the provision of Open Data to all interested parties
Open Data in Agriculture
•
•
In an era of Big Data, one of the most promising routes to achieve
R&D excellence in agriculture is Open Data, and in particular:
– provisioning,
– maintaining,
– enriching with relevant metadata and
– making openly available a vast amount of open agricultural
data
The use and wide dissemination of these data sets is strongly
advocated by a number of global and national policy makers such
as:
– The New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition G-8
initiative
– FAO of the UN
– DEFRA & DFID in UK
– USDA & USAID in the US
7

8. Open data is not always that useful ….
•
•
•
•
•
Messy data
Should be collected/fused
Should be filtered
Should be validated
Should be enriched with metadata to become
discoverable
• Should be standardized to allow interoperability

9. DATA SOURCES

10. Data sources

12. Data sources

15. SHOWCASES

16. Main goal
• to show how open data can
– support decision making in agricultural domain
– increase productivity
– contribute to food safety

17. Why open data in agriculture
• Decision makers need answers to questions
such as
– where to set up a unit?
– which agricultural activities to support through
funding?
– which type of cultivations?
– new investments

18. CASE OF AGRO-FOOD
COOPERATIVES

19. Let’s meet a persona
•
•
•
•
•
•
Christos Stamatis
CEO of the Stevia Coop
Crowd funding model
250 growers
first Greek Stevia
Problems that the coop is facing
–
–
–
–
How to follow food standards
Where to create value added processing unit
How much to invest in organic production
Price for the product

20. Problem 1: Strengthen the knowledge
about food safety
• The coop needs to strengthen the knowledge in Food
Safety and to follow the standards
• Needs to have access to a portal that provides access
to such information
• It could be extended to cover also other food products
and domains
• What kind of open data are needed
–
–
–
–
OER from Educational Institutions
Open courses
Data from the ministry on which are the food standards
Data from FAO e.g. FAO codex

21. Problem 1: Example
• Food Safety Knowledge
Network
– find trusted high quality
content (OER and
standards) regarding food
safety
– find job profiles and
connected competences

22. How such service can help
• Benefits for a stakeholder
– personnel that you need to ensure that you will
follow the food safety standards
– find the food safety standards that should be
followed
– define relevant training for your employees

23. Problem 2: Where to set up the adding
value processing unit
• The cooperative would like to have a product
on the shelf
• Valuable information
– available energy resources
– shipping roots
– availability of land

24. Problem 3: Organic portion of the
coops cultivation
• A cooperative would like to invest more in organic
cultivation
• Valuable information
– market needs in organic products and stevia
specifically
– prices of the last years for conventional products
– climate conditions
– soil quality maps

25. Problem 4: Define product price
• Estimate the price for coops’ product
• Valuable information
– sugar prices
– international prices of stevia
– meteo data
– import prices in Greece

26. CASE OF HELLENIC MINISTRY OF
RURAL DEVELOPMENT AND FOOD

27. Problem: Design of a state aid for a
new cultivation
• Decision makers of the Greek Ministry of Agriculture
• Should the ministry of Agriculture invest in a new
cultivation like Stevia?
• Which open data
–
–
–
–
Maps with irrigation info
Maps with land use
World statistics about the prices of stevia during the last 5 years
Data about the number of agricultural equipment in Greece that
could be re-used
– Info about imports in stevia
– Info about imports in sugar
– Meteo data
• Decision support tools

28. Potential production map example

29. What this needs
•
•
•
•
climate conditions and forecasts
agricultural land map
irrigation map
soil quality map

30. IDEAS ABOUT THE DEMO

31. Open Data Working Group Agricultural
Showcase
• Focus on the Food Safety case
• Aggregate all open educational resources at a
national and international level
– convince national organizations to open their
educational data and especially metadata
• Aggregate all job profiles at a national and
international level
• Combine with other datasets e.g. education,
maps etc

32. A food safety knowledge gateway for
cooperatives and agro food SMEs
• Similar to Food Knowledge Safety Network
• Cover at least 2 cases e.g. stevia, peach
• Find the data for each
– Learning resources and courses
– Job profiles
– Competences
• Technology
– tool for manual indexing
– tool for the aggregation of metadata
– simple portal build in Drupal

33. Action plan
•
•
•
•
Select the showcase
Finalize the showcase
Create a demo at a small scale
Present the demo at the next open data event